However, I can remember being a big Colin Kaepernick fan as well… as it seemed everyone was in the Bay Area, too.

And why not? Kaep ran wild against the mighty Packers in a playoff game. He — single-handedly — was reinventing the quarterback position. He brought us to Conference Championships and even the first Super Bowl in many years… came within a whisper of winning it, too.

I even remember a friend posing the ultimate question: “Would you rather have Aaron Rodgers or Kaep leading your team into the future?” I remember at the time it feeling very much like a toss up. Rodgers already had one MVP under his belt (and would get another in 2014), but we were all punch-drunk with the p-o-t-e-n-t-i-a-l.

So, when everyone asks, “what could possibly go wrong with making Jimmy G. the highest-paid football player in the league after only starting seven games?!” it’s hard not to think we were all feeling just as giddy about Kaep at one point…

… a feeling that seemed to go away as fast as it came.

P.S. With that said, I want to say for the record that I was one of the fans at this year’s incredible Niners-Titans game screaming, “Let Jimmy kick! Let Jimmy play D! Let Jimmy coach!” Certainly seems like he can do anything he puts his mind to on a football field. :)

On Friday, May 12th, the Giants were the worst team in the Major Leagues.

That all changed with their HUGE 17 inning win that night against the Cincinnati Reds.

I was there for all 17 innings. In fact, in a rarity, I was at the game about an hour early… so that’s about 6.5 hours of baseball for me!

By the end of the game… which ended just before 1am… there were only a couple dozen of us left in the park… you can see my picture of Buster Posey being greeted by his teammates after his game-ending homerun in the bottom of the 17th on the jumbotron… not a single soul in the bleechers.

A young (almost) rookie Ty Blach will pitch against Mr. Universe Clayton Kershaw tonight. This will tell us if its season changing or not.

For those that follow this blog, I thought Giants Skipper Bruce Bochy really mismanaged (blew!) the last two months of the 2016 season, including the last playoff game that could have sent the Giants to the World Series…

… and there’s no way the Cleveland Indians were going to beat the Giants in the World Series… the “even year” mojo would have been ON… ’10, ’12, ’14, AND ’16.

One of the many solutions open to Bochy last year was to put Ty Blach in the bullpen. He didn’t. And the Giants lost.

Tonight’s game is a reasonable proxy to see how this strategy would have worked.

Please stay tuned.

UPDATE: The strategy would have worked GREAT! Ty gave up 1 hit in 3 innings! THAT would have taken us to the World Series… and beyond.

That also shows something else: That Bochy’s “platooning” strategy of mathematically matching pitcher to hitter has big flaws. The axiom in sports has ALWAYS been: If someone has a hot hand, don’t take them out… let them play.

It’s just flat out weird that someone as experienced as Bochy doesn’t get that.

For the game, the Giants lost 2-1 but Blach pitched admirably well. He gave up 4 hits and 2 runs in 5 innings… biggest issue was he’s been training as a reliever, not a starter, so apparently Bochy was concerned about arm strength/stamina/injury.

Readers know I’m not so happy with Klay Thompson. Common sense dictates wearing a f***ing Dodger hat to a Giants game is simply out-of-bounds. The Cavs have had the Warriors number ever since.

But, over the weekend, I spoke to an in-the-know Warriors exec. I, of course, voiced my Klay Thompson outrage… and he said, “you know, he got taken to task by the other players pretty good for that one.”

That is not the same thing as an apology. But it’s nice to know the Warrior players (unlike Warrior management) care enough about their SF Giant fanbase to police their own on this one.

And, somehow, the fog that Thompson cast upon the Warriors magically started to lift: Warriors 126 Cavs 91.

Still waiting for an apology… most likely will be waiting forever… but it’s a start.

It’s hard to be a fan. It’s a tremendous amount of time and emotional energy.

It’s particularly hard to be a fan — after spending a tremendous amount of time and emotional energy — having to watch a manager make the same mistakes over and over and over.

That happened tonight… my San Francisco Giants were eliminated from the baseball playoffs… because of INSANE bullpen management by Bruce Bochy…

… the same INSANE bullpen management style that made the Giants nearly the worst team in baseball after the all star break.

I’m tired of hearing how it’s the players fault… that we don’t have any closers. We had lots ways to close a game… how about just keeping your starting pitcher in when he has a hot hand? Bochy pulled Matt Moore after the 8th even though he was throwing a 2 hitter!

Or how about using one of your other starting pitchers? It was, after all, an ELIMINATION GAME. Any of your starters would have gladly taken the ball… how about Samardzija? Or Blach? Heck, even Madison Bumgarner, who only threw 5 innings last night, would have picked up the ball in an instant.

Or how about letting a fresh Will Smith throw to more than one batter? It’s so painfully clear that Bochy’s platooning style simply wasn’t working.

How about doing ANYTHING other than doing the same ineffective stuff over and over and over?!

This is the second most crushing loss in my five decades or so of being a Giants fan.